Easter Sunday from within the tent

This morning I want to start with Wordsworth, not the daffodils which would be so suitable for the time of year but lines composed on Westminster Bridge:

Earth has not anything to show more fair
Dull would he be of soul who could pass by
A sight so touching in its majesty:
This City now doth like a garment wear
The beauty of the morning: silent bare
Ships, towers, domes, theatres and temples lie
Open unto the fields, and to the sky
All bright and glittering in the smokeless air.
Never did the sun more beautifully steep
In his first splendour valley, rock or hill
Ne’er saw I,never felt, a calm so deep.
The river glideth at his own sweet will
Dear God! The very houses seem asleep
And all that mighty heart is lying still.

It seems so fitting amidst the scenes of silent cities to stand with the poet on the bridge looking over the scene, pondering, absorbing and waiting. Bating our breath with him. From Good Friday afternoon  until Easter Sunday morning the world held its breath, angels were waiting, the people of Jerusalem did not recognise who Jesus was yet they were waiting for a Messiah. We know that our modern world is broken, it is always and usually so, and today it feels even more fractured and so we wait,

This Easter our joy is muffled, no bells ringing out the Easter morn, the news distressing, disturbing and deathly. But wait, the promise of Easter is of new life, of awakening; that promise is still there “all bright and glittering in the smokeless air.” and we can still celebrate the Resurrection for its extraordinary announcement of change and hope. Jesus came to show us the way, there is no looking back from this moment nothing is the same again.

Perhaps we need this Easter even more than before. In Wordsworth’s poem there is, it seems to me, a propulsion forward, a compulsion indeed to look forward. Those words - fair, majesty, beauty, bright, glittering, splendour, calm, sweet are a pregnancy, ready to burst forth when the city houses which seem to sleep will sleep no more. Like Jesus the mighty heart has been lying still, like us the beating of every unaccustomed day stilled. But we wait in hope, in certainty for on this day we celebrate the news, the demonstrated, exhibited astounding recorded, witnessed truth that after death comes LIFE.

May I wish you all a happy Easter.

Amen